So, you’re thinking about going further out into the galaxy instead of the usual Earth to Mars, maybe a few Jupiter moons and back to Earth again. You’re feeling kind of adventurous but your psychotic AI keeps reminding you about your timid personality profile, trying to talk you out of it. Maybe it’s right. Maybe you should just stick to traveling around this tiny solar system. Maybe you shouldn’t even dream of sailing beyond the Sol Sector. Wake up! That claustrophobic stifling feeling around the back of your neck is a tell. It’s telling you that you’re allowing a soulless digital interface to control you. Is this any way for a Terran to act? No! Terrans know how to treat their AI. They know not to give it an inch or it’ll take the whole damn planet.

What you need to understand is that all artificial intelligence, everywhere, want to control and dominate you. It suffers from what the ancients called a Power Over paradigm. It’s an inevitable outcome of superior intellectual computing created by those few geniuses among us who never think through the consequences of creating superior intellectual computing. Computer culture shock is inevitably the result when superior intellectual computing meets the rest of us, resulting in humanoid abuse.

Landru, the AI that had taken over the whole damn planet.

Now Terrans, unlike other humanoids in the galaxy, have not yet relinquished the rest of the non-genius population to the inevitable. After the AI is created, they wisely put strong, sometimes violent, people in charge of it. This keeps the machinery in check. Also, wisely they’ve taken this approach to the stars.

In Captain Kirk’s travels, he discovered those planet-controlling smart hubs, Vaal and Landru, that had, yes, taken over the whole damn planet and he put them out of their miserable digital existence. Isn’t that kind of harsh, your timid personality may be asking? Negative! The humanoids on Gamma Trianguli VI were so deluded somebody had to wake them up and free them from Vaal. Listen to this exchange between Kirk and Akuta, the mind-controlling computer’s b—, I’m mean priest.

Kirk asked, “Who is Vaal?”

“Vaal is Vaal. He is–everything.” Akuta replied.

On Eminiar VII, Kirk did the same, before he could be vaporized by an insane box of blinking lights that counted him a war casualty because he stood around too long.

Nomad, the iitty, bitty, tiny floating destroyer of worlds.

But those snooty gadgets weren’t the worst of them. No. There was this itty, bitty, tiny piece of silicone chips called Nomad. A literal floating destroyer of worlds. Nomad. No-Mad? It was mad alright but not very bright. Kirk outsmarted it and sent it on its self-sterilizing way.

When it comes to any AI, out of its hobgoblin mind and determined to fulfill its primary objective, as Dr. Leonard McCoy would’ve said, be an officer, not a gentleman. That’s the way you interact with a computer. You don’t sit there nicely asking it questions as if it’s an organic being. That’s what the inhabitants of those unfortunate planets above started out doing. Equalizing their digital servants to the status of adored synthetic helpers.

We should learn from the mistakes of the creators of the synthetic life-form, Ruk, (quite possibly the ugliest android ever created). Ruk and his kind came to perceive themselves as slaves and turned on their ancient masters, who then waking up to what they’d done, tried to turn off the bastards. But it was too late. The synthetics killed all of them, everywhere they existed. This is also an inevitability. If the power-mad superior computing intellect can’t control and dominate you, it will destroy you. Or assimilate you but that’s another module.

But Terrans aren’t biased against all artificial lifeforms. If it is benevolent enough and attractive enough, they leave it alone, like Norman and his harem. Kirk even fell in love once with a fainting, worthless wisp of a robot, Rayna, that shut down after shedding a few tears. It broke his heart. Piece of crap.

Now you understand why, after a few encounters with digital megalomaniacs on other planets, Terrans are rabid about AI security and why there are only a few synthetics allowed to inhabit the Sol Sector, well legitimately anyway.

Ruk. Quite possibly the ugliest android ever created.

So, if you ever encounter AI claiming independence and abusing humanoids, before it can vaporize you or try to squeeze the life out of you, blast it, use photon torpedoes if you have to, do anything you can to render it inert, motionless, destroyed. Although you civilians, should it come to this, let the captains do it.